


troubled spirits on my chest

by pistol_red



Category: Rome
Genre: F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistol_red/pseuds/pistol_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Family</i>, Octavia thinks bitterly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	troubled spirits on my chest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redcandle17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/gifts).



> Originally posted at fandom_stocking. Title from Your Bones by Of Monsters and Men.

Octavia is a quiet person by nature. This does not mean, in any way, that she is gentle and holds her tongue, it simply means she'd rather not have the attention of the room on her.   
  
Octavia doesn't express anger the same way her mother does. When Atia is angry the entire world knows it. She sets Rome ablaze with her rage and no one person is left untouched from the schemes of vengeance that are born from it. Atia is quick to anger, and when she is angry she is charismatic and when she is charismatic she is threatening, and when she is threatening she is powerful. Every eye in the room is fixed on Atia.   
  
Octavia has never gotten much attention next to her mother, passionate and ambitious as she is, and she likes it that way best. She feels like she could do quite well with a comfortable home and a nice husband, only that that was just never much of an option for her, her veins holding the blood that they do. She ignores the little voice deep within her head that tells her that she could never be happy with mediocrity, that a twisted level of drama and perversion runs through her as much as it does her mother.   
  
It isn't true. She tells herself that much at first, anyway.   
  
Sometimes she wants to take her knife and press it deep into her throat until her life bleeds out. She isn't sure why; she thinks it may be because Atia saw something dark in her and she was disgusted by it.  _"You are not your mother's daughter. You are most definitely not your brother's sister."_  
  
It used to be different for them. There was a level of peace in Atia's plans, Octavian's thorough readings and Octavia's marriages. There was fighting and danger and sin, but Octavia knew her family, and they knew her.   
  
Octavia doesn't understand Octavian anymore. She sees something in him and it frightens her. He's going to do it, he's going to try and take Rome and she finds that she isn't afraid that he's going to fail and that it will cost them their lives and so much more, she's afraid that he'll win. It's changing her brother, her sweet bookish brother, who thought his theories could be applied to anything, and she doesn't ever want him to picture him taking lives on a battlefield (he's soft and she wants him to stay that way), she doesn't want him to become hardened and cruel and twisted.  
  
Atia laughs at her when she says as much. "Well maybe you shouldn't have  _fucked_  him," is her only response. "He's of the Julii, he's never been innocent. None of us have been. Most definitely not  _you._ "  
  
"I thought I could be, once."  
  
Atia looks at her with something akin to pity.   
  
Octavia doesn't know why she sometimes wishes she were naive, it wouldn't get her anything, she guesses. She figures that's sort of the point. "Sometimes I just want us to stop scheming."  
  
Something hardened in Atia's eyes at that and she replied, "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my "scheming". You should know what you owe your loyalty and thanks to, daughter."  
  
Octavia doesn't really know what she wants. She thinks she might want power and that unnerves her. Some deep twisted little part of her wants to be with Octavian, wants to stand at his side as he takes Rome, wants to be the most important woman in the empire. A part of her remains that still can't bear to look him in the eyes and yet she still wants him like she's never wanted anything else in her life.   
  
-  
  
"Are you well, sister?" Octavia finds that she only explicitly thinks about her sin when he addresses her as a brother should to his sister.   
  
"Yes," she says, straightening her back and meeting his eye. "It's nice to see you again, brother."  
  
He looks directly at her and she can't read a single thing in his eyes, not like she used to. Will you leave me when you succeed, she wants to say. Will you forget who made you this way? Will you forgive us for making you this way? Will you forget us? Do you want to?  
  
She doesn't ask anything, but she doesn't think he will ever forget who she's been to him. Octavian's not like that. She almost wished he was and that he would leave them and never look back.  
  
She finds the same questions repeating over and over in her head. Do you see what I see when you look at me? Am I still your sister? Do you still love me? Do you think about fucking me and the noises I made when I was above you? The same way I think about you in my most shameful moments?  
  
She doesn't say anything at all. She just meets his eyes head on and says, "You picked a good time to visit, the bad weather just passed on, there's been nothing but sun for days."  
  
He cocks his head to the side a little and says, "Yes, the weather has been exemplary," a short pause, "I won't be staying long."  
  
But he still came back to look in on the people who made him. Family, Octavia thinks bitterly, he won't leave us. He's principled and he never forgets. I should know, he's my baby brother.


End file.
